He was looking up the phone number of the Police Municipale in Ussel when Delaron appeared. Bruno handed him a copy of Murcoing’s photo from the surveillance camera at the printing shop.
‘This didn’t come from me, understood? And I’m not saying he’s a murder suspect, just that the police urgently want to interview him. I think the Police Nationale will be issuing his mugshot later today. He’s Paul Murcoing, lives in Bergerac, makes a living as a driver – and his grandpa is getting a full-scale Resistance funeral here in St Denis next week. That’s it.’
‘Thanks, Bruno. Where was this taken? Looks like a print from a surveillance tape.’
‘I’m not saying, Philippe. Bon courage. Oh, by the way, there’s something you can do for me in return.’ Bruno pulled out the photos of Loïc Murcoing as a young man in his Resistance unit and handed them to Delaron. ‘I’d like these blown up as large as you can make them. It’s for his funeral. I’d like to put them by the coffin in the church.’
Once Delaron had left, Bruno called Gilles at Paris Match to say he’d always be welcome in St Denis but he wasn’t sure how much of a story there would be in a burglary.
‘I see you’ve got a murder on your hands as well, the victim being another Brit. Any connection?’
‘It’s not clear yet. Look, Gilles, this is not an affair where I can give you much help. A juge d’instruction has been brought in and I’ll be in real trouble if I start feeding you stuff. Crimson hasn’t even got back here yet.’
‘I was talking to one of the British reporters here in Paris. He said Crimson gets back tomorrow and he and some others are heading down to St Denis. I’ll be joining them, but I’ll arrive earlier. I’m booked into the Vieux Logis from tonight. I’ll be in that café of yours by eight tomorrow morning.’
‘The Vieux Logis? I didn’t know Paris Match was making that much money these days.’
‘Let’s just say I have a hunch about this story. See you tomorrow.’
When Bernard Ardouin called to say he was finished with Fullerton’s brother, Bruno went to the Gendarmerie to pick him up and propose a drive to Francis’s farm in the Corrèze.
‘Nothing else for me to do,’ Fullerton replied. ‘They can’t release the body until the identification is confirmed and then I’ll have him cremated and take the ashes back to England. If you take the autoroute to Ussel, I think I remember the way. I need to see the notaire there, in any event.’
He pulled a mobile phone from his briefcase and began dialling. Bruno called J-J to tell him of his plans and then called Isabelle to keep her in the picture. Finally he made a courtesy call to the police in Ussel to say he was coming onto their patch. When he finished, Brian Fullerton was looking at him, a perplexed expression on his face.
‘That’s odd. I just called the number of the farm in Corrèze, wondering if my brother had left one of his usual messages about where to find the key. He’s got these different hiding places each with its own letter. It was a sort of code he worked out with my kids when they spent a summer here, a family joke. But somebody answered, a woman, and when I gave my name and asked who she was she slammed the phone down.’
‘Merde,’ said Bruno. Could it have been Yvonne? Was that where she and her brother were hiding out?
He called the Ussel police again and explained the situation. They promised to send a car.
13
A single policeman waited by his van in front of the farmhouse. It was similar to those around St Denis except the stone was grey and the shutters were painted bright red. One long, low barn was attached to a wing of the house and a second, taller barn stood to one side. The garden was unkempt. Stalks of last year’s dead geraniums lay forlornly in pots and there was jungle where the vegetable garden would have been. The trees planted to the north and west looked stunted, as though hunched against the wind. It would be cold here in winter, Bruno thought.
‘By the time we got here, the birds had flown,’ said the flic. He introduced himself as the town policeman from Neuvic, a name that startled Bruno. ‘I know, you keep thinking it’s the one in Dordogne. This is another Neuvic, best known for the lake. You can’t see it from here but it’s just over that ridge to the south.’
‘Have you been inside?’ Bruno introduced Fullerton as the new owner, brother of the murdered man.
‘The main house was open so we took a quick look around. The beds had been slept in, dirty dishes in the sink and there’s a cashier’s ticket from Leclerc in the bin dated two days ago. I don’t know if anything’s been touched or stolen. The message from Ussel said it was that guy in the bulletin from the Police Nationale, the murder suspect.’
Bruno took two sets of gloves from his van, donned one and gave the other to Fullerton, who’d been peering through the windows. Nothing seemed different, he said. Bruno led the way into the house. It was an odd mixture. Some beautiful pieces of old furniture, an Empire clock atop an Empire table, two Louis XVI chairs, a large tapestry on the stone wall that Bruno thought might be an Aubusson, were scattered like islands of good taste among cheap modern stuff that looked like IKEA. The kitchen was filthy, layers of grime on the red tile floor and the stove was worse. Bruno noted empty bottles in a box and dirty glasses in the sink.
He kneeled down to look at the bottles. In two of them, the dregs were still moist. One was a Château Kirwan, 2005, and the other was Haut-Brion, 2001. He checked his notebook. They could have come from Crimson’s cellar. In the dining room, some strips of wallpaper hung down forlornly and a large brown patch of damp covered part of the ceiling. His eye was drawn by an exquisite small oil painting of a young woman in eighteenth-century dress on a swing.
‘School of Watteau, I believe,’ said Brian. ‘Were it a real Watteau it would be worth more than the whole place.’
Upstairs, the towels in the bathroom were damp and the floor of the shower was still wet. In one bedroom they found female underclothes and pair of discarded tights. In the other a pair of men’s dirty socks were balled beneath the bed. Both beds had been left unmade.
‘Looks like they left in a hurry,’ said Brian. ‘Maybe they were in a panic after I called.’
‘Have you looked in the barns?’ Bruno asked the flic. He said no, adding that they were locked. Bruno asked Brian if he remembered the codes for the keys.
‘Gloria,’ he said triumphantly, and laughed. ‘G for the geranium pot, L for the ladder, O for the orangerie, which is what we called the little glass lean-to at the back, R for the rake in the tool-shed, I for the iron seat that came from an old tractor, and the last A is for that artichoke pot hanging on the wall.’
He lifted the terracotta artichoke from its hook to reveal a big iron key and a smaller one that looked like a Yale. Bruno and the flic followed him to the single-storey barn. He used the big key to open a large but partly broken wooden door. Behind it lay a much more solid metal door which he opened with the Yale. He flicked on an inside light, a fluorescent strip that flickered and buzzed before suddenly blazing into stark life.
Cases of wine were stacked against the far wall. In front of them were heaped rugs, rolled up and tied with lengths of orange plastic string. Alongside stood paintings wrapped loosely in canvas. Bruno went back to his van for the file of photos of Crimson’s possessions. The first painting he uncovered was a thickly-painted scene from a window, dominated by a flapping curtain and overlooking a dismal garden with dirty brick houses in the background. It was marked in Crimson’s file as a Bratby, valued at eight thousand euros, and Bruno saw the artist’s signature in the bottom corner. To make sure, he unwrapped the next canvas and unveiled two rather gloomy watercolours of beach scenes, beautifully framed. Each was recorded in Crimson’s photos, and listed as John Sell Cotman. They were valued at five thousand euros for the pair.
‘No doubt about it, these are stolen goods,’ he said, rising and showing the photos to the flic. ‘They were stolen from a house in my commune at the beginning of this week.’
‘You mean my br
other was up to his old tricks?’ Brian asked.
‘Not as far as these paintings were concerned. He was still in England when these were stolen,’ Bruno said. ‘But for the rest, I don’t know. Let’s look in the other barn.’
It was locked, so in search for the keys Fullerton led them to the tool-shed and the orangerie in vain before going to the back of the house where an aluminium ladder lay propped lengthwise against a wall. He bent down at one end and slid a key from the hollow of one of the legs, held it up with a grin and the three of them trooped to the large barn. This had two wide wooden doors, each about two metres high. They were locked with a chain and a padlock. The key fitted and turned easily and they hauled the two doors open to reveal a tall white van. On its side were painted blue letters reading Chauffage-France with an address in the industrial zone of Belvès. Its rear doors were open and the interior was stacked high with furniture, mainly tall wooden dressers, each protected from its neighbour by blankets.
‘Bingo,’ Bruno breathed to himself. On the floor of the van by the open doors were four heavy iron tubes, each about a metre long, held together by elasticized bands with hooks at each end.
‘Any idea what these might be?’ he asked, pointing at the tubes. He wondered whether he might have found the murder weapon.
‘Rollers,’ said Brian, lighting the pipe he’d been filling. ‘It’s how they move heavy furniture, sliding them along on those rollers.’
More furniture was stored in the barn: large and small tables, more dressers, tall glass-fronted bookshelves with ornate carved headings and sets of handsome dining chairs.
Bruno called Isabelle, trying without success to keep the pride from his voice, to tell her that he’d found at least some of Crimson’s belongings and that his suspicions had been confirmed of the link between the burglaries and the murder. He allowed himself a few moments to enjoy her praise, feeling like a schoolboy rushing home with a prize, and then rang J-J to get the arts squad and forensic team to the Corrèze farmhouse.
‘We’ve found the white van and we may even have the murder weapon,’ he went on. ‘It ties Murcoing with Fullerton and we may be able to clear up a whole host of burglaries into the bargain.’
‘On my way,’ snapped J-J, and Bruno turned to see Brian delving into one of the dressers in the back of the white van. He was wearing gloves so he’d do no harm. It was probably all his property anyway.
‘Is it OK with you if I head off home now?’ asked the local flic, looking at his watch. ‘I was due off at two.’
Sure, said Bruno, shaking hands and thanking him. He promised to send a copy of his report to the Ussel station, and to make sure they got some of the credit once Murcoing was caught. He watched the police van disappear down the bumpy track.
‘Can you give me a hand to move this furniture a bit?’ Brian asked from inside the van. ‘Just lean that dresser over to the left so I can get this drawer open.’
Bruno complied, and was rewarded with a triumphant cry from Brian as he eased from the drawer a white Apple laptop computer.
‘That’s where my brother always hid it when he was travelling,’ said Brian. ‘Do you think I might get it back when you’re done with investigating what’s on it? I always lusted after one of these.’
‘I thought you said you and your brother weren’t close,’ Bruno said. ‘You seem to know a lot about his habits.’
‘We made the effort to keep up. I even came out here with him once, just the two of us.’
‘What about his mobile phone?’ Bruno said. ‘We never found it at the gîte. Maybe that’s here, too.’ He sighed as he looked at the mass of furniture to be moved.
‘No problem,’ said Brian, took out his own phone, thumbed through the address book and dialled a number. ‘If it’s here, we’ll hear the “Money, money, money” song from the musical Cabaret. That’s his ringtone.’
No sound came. Brian shrugged and took the laptop into the house. Bruno followed him into a room that was used as a study, with a desk and crammed bookshelves and an old-fashioned phone. As Bruno glanced around, Brian ducked under the desk, and pulled up a power cord still attached to a converter plug.
‘Francis always left a power cord here, in case he forgot one,’ Brian explained, and plugged in the laptop. He began muttering to himself as the screen opened and demanded a password. Suddenly he looked up and struck himself on the forehead. ‘Idiot!’
He turned to Bruno. ‘I forgot to look at the shrine. It’s that big cupboard. Is it open?’
He pointed to a giant built-in corner cupboard. It had two double doors that stretched from floor to ceiling, nearly three metres tall, in heavy, age-darkened oak. Bruno tugged at the handles but the doors were locked. Brian pulled the drawer completely out from the desk, and from the back of it took a key that had been attached with heavy-duty metallic tape.
‘This may come as a bit of surprise,’ said Brian, sounding apologetic as he inserted the key. ‘I should have mentioned it before.’
‘Mon Dieu,’ breathed Bruno as the doors opened and a rack of guns met his eye. There were two rifles, two old submachine guns, a revolver, a small mortar and an antique radio set, all grouped around a large framed photograph of a young man in British army uniform of the Second World War. He wore three white stripes on his sleeve. A smaller photo of a pretty young woman of the same era hung beside it. Draped above the portrait was a flag from the FFI, the French Forces of the Interior. Below it was a row of medals, two Nazi daggers and an old Wehrmacht helmet. Between them, very expensively framed, was a Banque de France banknote that Bruno recognized – the same design and denomination as the one he had seen gripped in the hands of old Loïc Murcoing.
‘Meet Grandpa,’ said Brian. ‘That’s the shrine. And that photo of Grandpa is a much better likeness of Francis than that passport photo you’ve got. It was uncanny, how closely they resembled each other.’
But what caught Bruno’s eye were the two empty slots in the display of guns, one shaped like a handgun and the other like a small machine pistol, with the velvet backdrop unfaded where they had been.
‘I wonder where they’ve gone,’ said Brian. ‘That was where the Sten gun used to be. And the other one was a Browning nine-millimetre. I’ll be sorry if we can’t find those.’
‘Are these in working order?’ Bruno asked.
‘They still work and he cleaned them regularly. We used to do a bit of hunting with the rifles. I used the Lee Enfield but Francis always used the French Lebel. We also tried some target shooting with the Browning that’s missing.’
‘If I were you, I’d not repeat that to anyone else, least of all to any policeman,’ said Bruno. ‘As far as they know, you never fired any of these and your brother told you they were harmless. Otherwise this could get very complicated for you. Now, what can you tell me about this shrine and your grandpa?’
Their mother had been French, Fullerton began, and so had their grandmother, a young woman from this part of the Corrèze whom their grandpa had met and made pregnant during the war. He’d returned after the war to marry her. Grandpa, known in the family as Sergeant Freddy, had been a wireless operator with the Special Operations Executive, SOE, the British agency established to build and train resistance movements across the Nazi-occupied Continent.
That was Sergeant Freddy in the large photo, and Grandmère Marie beside him. The medals included Grandpa’s Distinguished Conduct Medal, the oak leaf for his mention in dispatches, and a series of the usual campaign awards. He had been dropped into France in March 1944, to operate the wireless communications that brought in the parachutages, the air drops of arms and equipment from Britain that went to the Resistance. The radio in the shrine was a genuine British mode B Mark II, a device as crude as it was weak, with a signal at best of only twenty watts and requiring at least twenty metres of aerial. Constantly on the move to evade the German radio direction finder vans, the wireless operators suffered a terrifying attrition rate. If they tried to transmit from towns, the
Germans turned off the electricity in every substation until the radio died. Then they surrounded the street. If they tried to transmit from the countryside, they needed an accumulator, heavy, cumbersome and not easy to charge.
Sergeant Freddy was smart. He developed a system to charge an accumulator with parts from an old bicycle and never transmitted from the same place twice. He managed to evade the Germans until the final liberation of the region in August 1944. But in June of that year many Resistance groups rose prematurely, believing that the D-Day landings heralded imminent victory. They were slaughtered by German regular units. In Tulle, the nearest large town to the farmhouse, a hundred and twenty of them were hanged in a single day. A hundred and fifty more were sent to Dachau, where most of them died. Sergeant Freddy was also lucky, and the FFI flag was for the Maquis du Limousin unit that had helped him get away from Tulle.
The guns were all genuine from the period and some of the individual weapons had been used by the Resistance. Francis had bought them over the years, from collectors, from estate sales and auctions of family heirlooms. The Sten gun and the German Schmeisser had been obtained from what Brian described as ‘very unsavoury sources’, which Bruno assumed to mean criminals.
‘That banknote’s a new one on me. I never saw that before,’ Brian added, leaning forward to study it more closely. ‘Would it be from the Neuvic train robbery?’
‘I think almost certainly, yes. Any idea how your brother might have got hold of it?’
‘No, but I’m not surprised. Francis was fascinated by that incident and read everything he could get his hands on, went round interviewing people. It was all an accident, maybe more of a coincidence, the nearest town to here being also called Neuvic. That set him off. He spent a lot of time on it, going to the Public Records Office. I know he was trying to find out if Grandpa had been involved. He’d got hold of some account that confirmed Sergeant Freddy had arranged some of the parachute drops that went to Groupe Valmy.’
The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6) Page 12